


Welcome to the Wasteland

by SeptemberMorningBell



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fallout, Bad Pick Up Lines, Badass Katsuki Yuuri, Courier! Yuuri, Humor, M/M, Mysterious Stranger perk Victor, New Vegas, Oblivious Katsuki Yuuri, Pining Victor Nikiforov, bad everything really, bad life choices, but don't worry, eventually, everyone's tragic backstory, they will be happy, victor is thirstier than the mojave ya'll, wild wild wasteland perk, yuuri also needs him some nuka cola for the thirst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-13
Updated: 2017-11-24
Packaged: 2019-01-16 18:51:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12348558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeptemberMorningBell/pseuds/SeptemberMorningBell
Summary: Yuuri meets Viktor two hundred years after the end of the world, under the last dying embers of another nuclear sunset and the blood-warmed dirt of his own grave.It’s…not the worst first impression he’s ever made.Yes, it's the Fallout: New Vegas AU that nobody asked for but I delivered anyway. Remember, you can always count on the Mojave Express.





	1. Shot in the Head and You're To Blame

**Author's Note:**

> I'm back, with another ridiculous AU for these ridiculous boys. Be aware, this is Fallout based, so there's gonna be some violence and the like. And it opens the same way F:NV does, so, warning, Yuuri gets shot. (But he survives!) You have been warned.

Yuuri meets Viktor two hundred years after the end of the world, under the last dying embers of another nuclear sunset and the blood-warmed dirt of his own grave.

It’s…not the worst first impression he’s ever made.

Not that he’s really worrying about first impressions _now_ , because he’s pretty sure that what he’s going through are in fact his _last_ impressions and he’s at least glad that the universe was thoughtful enough to provide him with something so nice to look at while he bleeds out.

“Wooooow,” he says, more surprised that he can actually still speak than anything, blinking up at the gorgeous apparition who’s just knelt down beside him in the desert dust. Flashes of the sunset’s pink and orange and a blaze of unexpected white-hot silver dance in his wavering vision as the figure jolts back at his words. 

“You’re shiny,” Yuuri says, raising his hand to that flashing silver hair. Or, rather, making a vague effort in that direction and quickly realising that, oh, he can’t feel his hands _at all_ , when did that happen? In fact, he can’t really feel anything below his shoulders, and, ha, wow, that totally sucks deathclaw dick and he’s definitely going to have some very pointed words with the bastard who shot him when he finds him in the afterlife.

The angel beside him frowns and makes a movement as if to rise.

“No, no, don’t,” Yuuri says frantically, trying to focus his eyes. “I can’t hurt you. I’m ‘armless.”

He giggles, because, damn, he’s hilarious, why hasn’t anyone ever told him about this?—and immediately regrets the motion.

“Hey, no, shh, don’t try and move,” the most gorgeous being in the universe says, patting his shoulders anxiously like he’s not quite sure what to do, and his voice is like a stream of purified water pouring from his lips, deep and mellow. “You need to hold still. You’ve been shot.”

“Yeah. I know,” Yuuri says, because _really_. “It’s fine, though,” he adds, because at the end of things, it is. He’s been borrowing against his future for twelve years of last-ditch chances and blind shameless luck and, honestly, he’s been expecting the accounting to come for so long it’s almost a relief that it finally has. 

He stares up at the impossibly blue eyes looking down into his, a slight smile on his lips. “Do you think my mom will be there?” he says.

“Oh,” the angel says, very quietly. And then: “We need to get you to a surgeon.”

“She used to make the most amazing…eat?…food bowl? Amazing. So good. It was. It was yucca fruit. And yao guai meat. And…and gravy. I would kill a man to eat it again.” He smiles dreamily at the angel, who looks back with an expression so soft and concerned that Yuuri wants to simultaneously cry and kiss him until he can’t look worried anymore. “Hey, hey, you should come to our house and eat it, too. She’d like you.” He makes a noise he knows was supposed to be a giggle but comes out more like a whimper. “ _I_ like you. I mean, I don’t know you! But I like you. A lot. But you shouldn’t be here. In, in the wasteland, I mean. You’re so bright and soft. You belong somewhere better. She did too.”

“I…I like you too,” the angel says, long, careful fingers brushing Yuuri’s hair back from his face. “But we have to get you to a surgeon.”

Yuuri just blinks at him, admiring the way his blurring vision turns the beautiful face intently scanning the area into a swirl of silver and blue.

Something soft is pressed very carefully against the side of his head, and the next few moments are just fleeting impressions—pain and lightness and movement and the terribly dizzying vertigo of the abyss edge of unconsciousness. 

“Shit, ah, just stay with me, okay, gorgeous? You’re going to be fine.”

“ _You’re_ fine,” Yuuri slurs. He’s being carried—or he thinks he is; it’s equally possible that he’s finally dead and floating is the primary mode of transportation of wherever he ended up. Although, for having supposedly relinquished his mortal body, he sure feels really, incredibly shitty right now. “You can plasma blast me any time, if you know what I mean.”

He winks, although it turns out as more of a pained wince.

The angel chokes slightly, then laughs, and the sound is electric in the warm evening air, rumbles in his chest and eclipses every brilliant vision of a pre-war lifetime and every dream of green grasses and water he’s ever had. And his eyes are bluer than anything he’s ever seen and his smile is like the very heart in his chest and he wants, more than anything, to catch that laugh and keep it with him forever.

The suddenly close sound of a dog woofing quietly breaks the haze of his thoughts and oozes sugar-slow through the synapses of his mind, nudging at long buried memories and tingling in the back of his head like an itch he can’t scratch. The angel carrying him says something that might be ‘yucca’ or ‘mecha’ or any number of tangled phonemes, but he can’t find it in himself to think much about it.

The dog barks again, closer now and clearly pleased about something.

“Vic—Vicchan?” Yuuri says, woozily trying to look around. This is an objectively terrible idea, and he’s sharply reminded of it as his head gives a horrible sickening throb and the world starts giving up its edges to the darkness.

“No, no, _Viktor_ ,” the angel says, holding him impossibly, comfortingly tighter. “I’m Viktor.”

Giggles slide from Yuuri’s mouth like blood foaming up from his lungs and trickling down his chin. “Nooo,” he says. “You can’t be Victor. Victor’s my dog! You’re not a dog. You’re…” he trails off, struggling to parse his thoughts through the heavy quicksand coating his mind. 

“You’re my guardian angel,” he decides finally, pressing his cheek into the soft leather of his saviour’s coat. His eyelids flutter, open and shut, open and shut, the last dying light of dusk filtering through his lashes and leaving gaslight imprints in the darkness behind his eyes. He manages, somehow, someway, with all the sincerity and sudden unexpected strength of a man on the knife edge of death, to move his fingers enough to tug off the gold ring on his left hand and fumblingly push it into one of the pockets on the other man’s trench coat. He won’t be sure, later, why he does it, only that at that moment it seems like the most important thing he will ever do, the best and only thing he can give the man who made him smile when he was sure he was dying. “Be my guardian angel, not-Victor.”

“I’ll take care of you as long as you’ll have me,” his angel says, very quietly, blue eyes wide and brighter than the Mojave sun, and Yuuri falls away into the darkness with a smile.

 

 

Here’s what Viktor knows about miracles:

One: They’re beautiful. Devastatingly beautiful, like scatter-paint sunsets and laughter, and a half remembered hallway drenched in roses and stained-glass light. And beautifully devastating, too, in the way of nuclear blasts and arcing last-hope bullets and shadows left seared onto ruined walls, because nothing man is given is ever kind.

Two: Once upon a time, in a world long since gone, they’d meant hope. 

Three: The idea of them, and all belief in anything resembling a higher power or kinder universe, had gone up in radioactive ash clouds with the rest of Viktor’s innocence.

And four: he really, really did not expect to find one dying from a gunshot wound in the dust clouded hell of the Mojave desert.

 

But somehow, he had. Instead of the radscorpion infestation he’d set out to take care of he’d stumbled on a brown eyed, blood splattered marvel, trembling and dragging himself out of the dirt of a hastily-dug grave, coughing blood into the dust and barely able to move and still so beautifully, brilliantly _alive_.

Viktor didn’t think he could have found it in himself to laugh, if he’d been shot in the head and left to die—and he’d been in plenty of situation where it had seemed inevitable, and plenty more when he’d been the one doing the leaving—but this boy, this _miracle_ of a boy, he’d—

—Well, he’d smiled at Viktor like he’d been waiting his whole life just to watch him awkwardly try and stop the bleeding and say all the wrong things, like out of all the people who could have stumbled on him there in the desert he was the only one he’d really wanted, like he was genuinely, honestly glad that he was there, and not because he would staunch the blood and carry him to safety but because he was _Viktor_. And that was ridiculous, wasn’t it, because they’d never so much as seen each other before (and Viktor knew he would remember those eyes anywhere, in any city, in any lifetime, because you didn’t glimpse the sun for the first time in your life and then forget it), because their only connection was forged in the tenuous half-there shadow world of death and unexpected salvation, because his miracle, who’d laughed and flirted and talked about his mom and his dog with a bullet lodged in his head and no apparent anger at that fact, was clearly too good for this wasteland and Viktor…wasn’t.

And yet.

And yet.

He’d smiled, and the whole world had caught fire. 

Viktor thinks he might be in love.

 

 

That’s all well and good. In fact, it’s better than good. It is, in a phrase Viktor is known to use with reckless abandon, “Wow! Amazing!”

He’s not sure it’s going to stay that way. Because what Viktor, critically, _doesn’t_ know about his miracle is:

1\. His name.

2\. The name of the person who shot him, and preferably their location, so Viktor can be a good and proactive guardian angel to this wonder and present him with their severed head on a platter. 

3\. His hometown/ any location at which Viktor could reliably find him and make good on his promise to take care of him forever. (And also maybe get married and settle down and raise a farm full of dogs, although Viktor was willing to admit that maybe he was rushing that just a bit.)

Because Viktor, by some merciless twist of bad luck, had been forced to skip town before said miracle woke up from what he was told was a surprisingly successful surgery because the _fucking NCR keeps turning up like a bad penny and trying to bring him in for the prodigious bounty on his head fuck everything and especially General Karpisek_. And when Viktor had come back, barely a week later and frantic to see his miracle boy and maybe finally, finally find out his name—

He was gone. And Dr. Seung-gil, who a week previous he’d been willing to sing praises to high heaven of for saving this enigmatic, wonderful creature, had offered him nothing in the way of information about it.

( “Eh?” the doctor had said, looking up from meticulously sharpening a scalpel. “Why would I know his name? I just patch them up, I don’t need their life stories.”

Dr. Seung-gil _did_ however, manage to remember Makkachin’s name, and cooed happily over her while she chewed on a brahmin bone he’d given her. Viktor was torn between approval at the obvious affection and care for his dog, and frustrated misery that the same couldn’t have applied to his mystery boy.)

 

Viktor finds himself confiding all this to Chris when he slinks unhappily back onto the Strip a week later. Chris, as a dutiful friend, looks sympathetic as they drink their weight in vodka in the raucous, Dionysian madness of the Alpine, the blond heartbreaker’s casino on the Strip, but Viktor knows he doesn’t really think anything of it. So he sits and drinks, a plastic smile fixed on his face, sniffling into Makkachin’s curly fur when his friend turns away and trying very hard to pretend he’s not absolutely devastated over the disappearance of man he’d spoken to only for a few delirious, wonderful minutes. After all, Viktor Nikiforov is the greatest gunslinger in the west. Viktor Nikiforov is a legend under his vigilante alter ego—the Golden Ghost has saved more settlements than the NCR has founded, staged daring casino heists and distributed the winnings to those in need of them, hunted down raiders and powder gangers and deathclaws and executed them without a second thought. Viktor Nikiforov is an ice cold killing machine. Viktor Nikiforov definitely does not cry over boys with beautiful brown eyes and the warmest smile in the wasteland.

Viktor Nikiforov is really, really tired of being Viktor Nikiforov.

As Chris cackles through the story of his latest risque escapade, Viktor twists the gold ring he’s taken to wearing on his fourth finger, and thinks about miracles.


	2. I've Got Heartaches by the Number

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yuuri wakes up from a successful surgery, memory gone, deeply confused and intent on figuring out what happened.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Slides in two months late with Starbucks and fingerguns.*
> 
> Hey cool cats, Miss New Vegas here at Radio New Vegas, from the airwaves directly to your ears. That's right! It's another sunny day in the Mojave, and I'm back with another exciting episode of "Yuri!!! on Radiation"! So sit back, relax, crack open an ice cold Nuka-Cola, and catch up with our favourite wasteland wanderers.

_Gooood morning, Wasteland! It’s your favourite wrangler of the radio waves, Leo de la Iglesia, Still Alive and broadcasting straight from the heart of the Mojave! Ya’ll supermutants are going to have to do better than that if you want to kick us off the air! That’s right, they keep trying. You know the rules thought, don’t you, listeners? Don’t come back up here unless you’re bringing some brand new holotapes! Now, the news! A source who prefers to remain unnamed spotted a man he claims was the legendary Golden Ghost rescuing an injured traveller just outside of Goodsprings last week—wow, how lucky can you get? Fella should have a spin at the casinos. Last time I got hurt I had to wait three days for GH to come drag me out of Red Rock._

_…he just threw a bolt at me, can you believe? Ahem. Anyway. Also in the news: lots of movement at the NCR’s Camp McCarren, watchers suspect trouble brewing in the ongoing war with Caesar’s Legion. If that’s so, kids, be sure to always remember our motto: don’t be a fool, kick that legionnaire in the balls! You don’t want to end up on a crucifix, believe me. Hmm…there’s also a number of reports of high slaver activity in the Novac region—you have been warned. And on a lighter note, there’s a brand new cabaret open at Gomorrah, and word is that it is dynamite! And that’s it for the news. Watch your backs out there, my friends, and remember: the world may have ended, but we’re still alive and kickin’! Live every moment like it’s your last—because who knows? It could well be! Now, here’s a lovely classic tune from…_

 

 

Yuuri’s awakening, when it comes, is less a slow reacclimatizing to the currents of consciousness than a headfirst plunge into the freezing waters of reality. 

“What the fuck,” is what he means to say, when the pounding pain in his skull and the dull churning of his stomach hit his senses like a one-two punch to the face. 

“Wlerghgm,” is what comes out.

“Ah,” someone says, quiet and disinterested. “You’re awake.”

“Yrghhgh,” Yuuri says. He blinks his eyes, very slowly, as light-blur afterimages and incoherent shapes gradually reform into the unfamiliar neat lines of a unknown room. Meticulously clean, for the wasteland, scavenged furniture scrubbed free of dust and grime and repaired with an expert hand, the sharp tang of high-proof alcohol liberally applied bright in the air.

Doctor, then. That’s good. Doctors mean he’s not dead yet.

…he doesn’t know why he would be dead in the first place.

It occurs to him then, with sudden cold-water clarity, that he has absolutely no memory of anything after saying a cheerful farewell to Phichit and heading out to pick up his latest delivery for the Mojave Express. 

“Um,” he says, and feels inordinately proud that the syllables finally match up with his intentions. “Where exactly…am I?”

“You’re in my study,” the voice says, and his vision is suddenly eclipsed by a slim, dark figure leaning over him, thumbing open his eyelid and peering critically at his pupils. “Pupillary light reflex is good. Follow my finger, please.”

“I…okay…” Yuuri says, with a quiet yelp at the gloved digit suddenly moving in figure eights in front of his face. Still, he dutifully track it with his eyes, still completely adrift but in the familiar way of a man who’s been severely injured enough times to know the post-unconsciousness drill.

“Good. Now turn your head to the left. Okay. Right? Good. Lift your arm. Other one. Hmm. Odd.”

“Did—did I do something wrong?” Yuuri manages. “I’m sorry!”

“You mean aside from getting shot? Not that I know of. I’m just surprised you’re not showing any significant neurological deficits. Aside from the abnormally heightened sense of anxiety, of course, but that’s to be expected. It should fade in a few days.”

“Um,” Yuuri admits, a little shakily. “No, I’ve—actually always been like that.”

“Really?” the man—a doctor, must be, couldn’t be anything else—says, raising his thick, dark eyebrows ever so slightly. “And you’re still alive? Remarkable.”

On some level Yuuri knows that he should be offended, but honestly he’s far too exhausted and confused and in way too much pain to really make the effort to care.

“Yup,” he says instead. “Still not dead. Hurrah. Go me.”

“You mean, thank you, Dr. Lee, for performing this incredibly difficult surgery with minimal equipment and chance of success, all with no guarantee of repayment for my expenditures and increasingly gruesome threats from your trigger happy beau?”

“Uh, yeah, absolutely, I mean, thank you, Dr—Dr. Lee? Thank you. I’m sure it was very difficult and you sure saved my life and I’ll repay you as soon as I can—I just—I need to get a hold of my friend Phichit and—” he perks up, an idea making itself known to his pain hazed mind— “We work for the Mojave Express, they have a program for supply drops to frontier doctors—we can get you on the list! You can—wait, wait. What beau?”

“Hmm?” Dr. Lee says, looking up from what seems to be a meticulous accounting of all the supplies he’d used to save Yuuri.

“I don’t have a beau,” Yuuri says. “I mean…I don’t think I do?”

“Well, you kept flirting and promised you’d marry him as soon as you were out of surgery, so I made the perhaps erroneous assumption that you were romantically involved.”

Yuuri, too tired to be horrified, meditates on this for a moment, eyes crinkling and a hand pressed absently to the dressing on his head as he rifles through his memories, pages of a manuscript written in blood and sealed with the bittersweet intangibility of the lingering might-have-been. A manuscript that cuts off abruptly, cliffhangered on a cheerful goodbye and the half suggested sound of gunshots, before picking up in the here and now.

He certainly didn’t have anyone when he parted from Phichit, intending to meet back up in a week at the Nishigori’s ranch.

He didn’t have a hole in his head, either, so really, _anything_ could have happened.

“Is he…is he handsome?” he says, finally.

The part of his mind still dedicated to rational thought and self awareness cringes. 

(His inner Phichit pumps his fist with a whooping “Atta boy!” and winks.)

(Yuuri really, really wants to strangle his inner Phichit sometimes.) 

“If you’re into that sort of thing, sure,” Dr. Lee says, which is, as Yuuri is beginning to recognize as the good doctor’s modus operandi, just accurate enough to be completely useless. “His dog, on the other hand, was an absolute _darling_ ,” he adds, after a long moment.

This is slightly more helpful, as Yuuri is well aware of his own weaknesses and ‘good-looking men with cute dogs’ are very, very high on that list.

If dog and owner were especially cute, and his sense of restraint especially impaired, he could _entirely_ imagine himself proposing on the spot. 

He buries that train of thought with the rest of them, knowing full well his anxiety will raise them from the grave before he has the chance to forget.

“Um…is he here, then?” he says, still trying frantically to dredge up any memory of anyone or anything from the lingering blank spot in his thoughts. He doesn’t remember having a boyfriend, doesn’t remember the face of the person who shot him—and those two facts tie together far, far too well.

“No,” Dr. Lee says, squinting at his list and then at the bandage around Yuuri’s head.

“And…” Yuuri prompts, when nothing else seems forthcoming.

“And what?”

Yuuri hisses slightly. He is in _way_ too much pain for this. “Where did he go?”

“Beats me. He hightailed it out of here when the NCR showed up to take care of that radscorpion nest. I assume you have some kind of rendezvous point for these eventualities, particularly if you’re on the NCR’s shit list.” He gives Yuuri a look that can best be described as doubtful.

“I’m just a courier,” Yuuri says, raising his hands defensively. “I’m not on anyone’s shit list.”

Dr. Lee just shrugs and mumbles something that sounds vaguely like ‘figures’.

“I could be if I wanted to be, though,” Yuuri adds. “Just to make that clear.”

This pronouncement is met with a flat stare. “I honestly don’t care,” Dr. Lee says. “Now, as to your recovery: I removed the bullet during surgery, internal damage was minimal, most complications were blood loss related. You’re healing remarkably well—unusually so, actually; I took some samples for my research, don’t worry, I won’t do anything unethical with them—with no apparent neural or physical deficits. Give it a few days of bed rest, and then minimal activity until the wound is fully healed. If you don’t do anything stupid like going one on one with a cazador, you’ll be back to full functionality relatively quickly.” He nods, with an expression that in the right light could almost pass for satisfaction. “I will accept your offer of placing my town on the supply drop list as repayment for services rendered, on the condition that the first delivery contain enough stimpacks and rad away to replenish my stocks to requisite levels. I’ll give you the specifications.”

Yuuri winces slightly. That’s _not_ going to go over well with Min-So Park when she coordinates the next supply run. “Done,” he says anyway, because at this point, what else can he do?

“Good,” Dr. Lee says. “Now I suggest you rest. You’re not likely to be doing anything else for a while.”

 

Phichit arrives two days later, bursting into the doctor’s study with his laser rifle on his shoulder and a murderous gleam in his eye.

“Listen up, pretty boy,” he says, leaning over Dr. Lee and beaming like sunshine, all brilliance and slow-burn radiation damage spreading unnoticed in the blaze. “My best friend’s tracker’s been blinking non stop here for a week now, and I’m going to need some information. I’m sure you’ve seen him. Goes by Yuuri. Dark hair, big brown eyes, rad-hot bod, kicks like a Brahmin and wanders around with a severed deathclaw hand strapped to his arm for defence like it’s a totally normal thing? Him. Tell me where he is, or things are going to get really, really warm in here.”

“For heaven’s sake, Phi,” Yuuri says, leaning on a pair of borrowed crutches in the doorway and scrunching his eyes against the afternoon light. “Don’t threaten the doctor. That’s basically survival lesson one.”

“Threatening?” Phichit says, spinning around with a suddenly far less menacing grin. The laser rifle is slung back in its holster, his hands spread in appealing innocence. “Who was threatening anyone? I certainly wasn’t. I was just having a chat with Dr—with the doctor, about how he should close his shades in the afternoon. It’s gonna get really sweltering in here if he doesn’t. The Mojave sun is _brutal_ this time of year.”

“I too aggressively brandish laser rifles when having friendly chats,” Yuuri says. “It’s fine, Phi. I got hurt on the delivery, and Dr. Lee patched me up.”

“Oh. Well then,” Phichit says, twirling around with his usual manic energy and descending on Dr. Lee, who looks mildly horrified as he’s enveloped in a sudden crushing hug. “Thanks, doctor! I know Yuuri’s a stubborn bastard when he’s injured; I hope he didn’t cause you too much trouble.”

Yuuri contemplates throwing his crutch at Phichit, and decides against it only on the fact that he’d probably just dodge it anyway.

“He was unconscious, mostly,” Dr. Lee says, hastily extricating himself from Phichit’s death grip. “His sweetheart, however…”

Phichit slowly turns his head towards Yuuri, eyes gleaming, mouth shaped in a perfect ‘o’.

“Yuuri,” he breathes, almost vibrating with the urgency of his curiosity. “Your _sweetheart_?”

Yuuri stares forlornly at the wall for a moment, contemplating the choices that have led him to be here, now, doomed to try and repeatedly explain a mystery that gets deeper and more tangled every time he looks.

“I’m going to bed now,” he says. “Night.”

“Yuuri,” Phichit whines. “It’s not even midafternoon!”

“Can’t talk,” Yuuri says, limping carefully away. “Head injury. Very serious. Requires rest and _quiet_.”

“Actually, I was just about to come and inform you that you’re well enough to leave,” Dr. Lee says, squinting at the pages of his accounting book. “If you want to stay here longer, I will require payment up front.”

Yuuri sighs, long and exasperated, hauls himself back into the room.

 

It takes Yuuri a few days to realise the thin gold ring that customarily sits around his finger—last precious reminder of his parents, kept devotedly safe through storm and slaughter and slave-camps—is missing, a few hours to utterly panic at that fact, and a few days longer to ascertain that Dr. Lee is, in fact, being entirely truthful when he insists that he wasn’t wearing a ring when he came in for surgery.

“But,” the doctor had eventually added, apropos of nothing the morning of Phichit’s explosive arrival, as he came back from examining an injured brahmin, “I should probably mention. Your not-boyfriend left something for you before making himself scarce.”

‘Something’ turns out to be a poker chip, centre shot out by what was likely a small-calibre bullet and scratched with a weathered V.N. on the flip side. Yuuri spends the hours before Phichit bursts in turning it over and over in his fingers, wracking his scrambled brains for any vestige of memory, dredging up nothing but the taste of copper in his mouth and the beginnings of a blinding headache.

“It doesn’t make sense,” he wails, later on, sitting on the cramped single bed Phichit had rented in the local saloon, fingers white-knuckled around the cool ridged clay. “None of this makes sense!”

“I mean, yeah, we only have about three pieces of information,” Phichit says. Yuuri thinks that he’s taking all of this much too well. “Even I can’t make a coherent story out of that.”

Yuuri presses a hand to his temple and resists the urge to scream. “I know,” he says, teeth gritted and eyes scrunched in pain. “But Phichit. Some _radroach-fucking dick mutation_ shot me in the head. And I would really, really like to return the favour before they try it again.”

“Well, of course. I’m behind you in this 100 percent, to the death, giant assaultrons couldn’t stop me—you know that. I was just saying we might have to go backwards if we want to move forward, if you catch the drift.”

Yuuri looks at him, pushing his (thankfully, blessedly spared) spectacles up on his nose. “I’m listening,” he says.

Phichit beams. “Swell, because I’ve got an idea. But I’m going you need to play distraction while I hack into the servers in the Mojave Express offices…”

 

 

Viktor is incredibly, stupidly, gravity-reversingly drunk when Yurio kicks his way into his room in the Alpine and screams out a full raider encampment’s worth of incoherent rage and poorly clarified demand in his uncomprehending face, and it is only this tragic state of inebriation that leads him to agree without question to whatever it is his explosive little brother is asking him to do. It makes perfect sense at the time—he can’t properly drown his sorrows like the tragic star-crossed lover he is if Yurio is yelling at him, and if agreeing is the only way to stop the yelling, well…

He definitely regrets this the next day, when Yurio once again kicks open his door and storms in, bandolier loaded down with frag grenades and his beloved missile launcher slung on his shoulders.

“Viktor! Oi! Asshole! Did you forget your promise already?”

Viktor, whose head is currently the site of some sort of heavy artillery battle, blinks blearily in the pre-dawn light and tries very hard to understand why the universe isn’t allowing him to die in peace.

“Yurio,” he says, squinting through his mussed fringe. “I thought you were staying with Georgi. In…uh…blast. Novac?”

“Primm,” Yurio snarls. “And I was, until Anya went and got her idiot self kidnapped. I told you all this yesterday.”

“I was incredibly drunk yesterday,” Viktor says. “So…”

“Yeah, I kinda noticed.” Yurio leans against the table, arms folded and eyes agate-hard and judging. “Christophe said you were drinking yourself to death over a boy that turned you down, or something utterly ridiculous like that.”

“He didn’t turn me down,” Viktor says, flopping forward onto his pillow and regretting the motion immediately. “He gave me…he was—” He sighs, low and hollow, like the passage of air currents in empty rooms. “It was the NCR who ruined everything. Now he’s somewhere out there in the wasteland and I might never see him again.”

“He can’t have been that great if you didn’t even tell him where to find you before you left,” Yurio says, picking at a fingernail. “Now get your drunk ass up; I want to be on the road before it gets too hot.”

Viktor buries his face further in the pillow. “He’d been shot when I found him,” he says, voice muffled. “He wasn’t conscious long enough for me to tell him.”

Yurio stares, before slamming a hand down hard on the low metal table and emitting a noise halfway between a snarl and a disbelieving laugh. Viktor groans, palms pressed to his forehead. “You fucking—he wasn’t—you’ve been drunk off your ass for a week over a boy who _wasn’t conscious long enough for you to tell him anything?_ What the b—you know what? I don’t care. I’m done caring. Keep your personal problems to yourself from now on.” He inhales slowly, hands clasped, grinding teeth just this side of audible. “But, you know what? Drunk or not, you promised me you’d help me track down Georgi’s cazador spawn of a fiancee, and if I have to drag your sorry ass across the entire Mojave to do it then I will. I’m not going to be the only one dealing with Georgi’s wailing if we don’t find her. So get a move on, Mr. _Golden Ghost_. God. I can’t believe anyone ever thought you were a legend.”

“Well, fortunately those trusting in the Golden Ghost to save them are not required to deal with the miserable reality that is Viktor Nikiforov,” Viktor says, sitting up, smile carved on the curve of his lips and never reaching his eyes. “Thank goodness for that. Now, if you want to tell me exactly what you’re hauling me out into the Mojave for, Yurio, I’ll consider whether it’s worth my time to go.”

“You are so lucky you’re my brother,” Yurio says, kicking an inoffensive chest of drawers. “You and Georgi both. And his stupid fiancee. And Mila too. I hate all of you.”

“Yes, yes, I know,” Viktor says, hauling himself to his feet. “We’d be splattered all over the walls by now if we weren’t. You’re so forbearing to your family, Yurio.”

“Go shove your head in a mirelurk nest,” Yurio says, and throws Viktor’s boots at him. “And then get ready to go. We’ve got a missing hag to find.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait! I should be back to a more regular schedule coming up. I appreciate all your comments and kudos so much!
> 
> Next time, on Welcome to the Wasteland: A reunion? It might just be!
> 
>  
> 
> I have a [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/punsforthepungod) now! Containing ficlets, terrible puns, and concept art!

**Author's Note:**

> I've got a tumblr now! Come visit me at [punsforthepungod](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/punsforthepungod) to see concept sketches, sneak previews, ficlets, and celebrations of all the beauty that is our dark lord Katsuki Yuuri.


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